a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Jerry Sloan Attends Spurs Practice

He was easy to miss amid the hustle and bustle of the first day of training camp, attended not only by the Spurs and their support staff but a good 20 or so other visitors.

But former Jazz coach Jerry Sloan could only hide so long. Indeed, he wasn’t really hiding at all, just kicked back in a chair along the baseline at the Spurs practice facility on Tuesday to watch yet another practice unfold.

Gregg Popovich stopped by to pay his respects and chat briefly at the end of the session, bringing together two men with a combined 2,068 NBA victories together.

Loved these two tweets from Spurs beat writers Jeff McDonald and Mike Monroe:

Popovich has been a fan of Jazz coach Jerry Sloan’s since Sloan was a hard-nosed player for the Chicago Bulls in the late 1960s and into the ’70s. He was thrilled to see that Sloan, as is his annual practice, last week signed another one-year contract extension to remain on the Utah bench through the 2010-11 season.
…
“I hope he coaches there forever. He’s great for the league, a fantastic coach. His teams are tough and good every single year. If he wasn’t in the league, it would lose part of its personality.

“I just love his consistency. It doesn’t matter if it’s Joe Blow or Karl Malone on the floor. They all react and execute the exact same way. That’s a credit to him.”

“He’s always been somebody that I’ve looked up to from my younger days. Coming home on leave [from the Air Force], getting with the boys and going to the Chatterbox for a Stroh’s and fried mushrooms, and watching him on the TV, beating the hell out of people. My memories of Coach Sloan go way back.”